


A Woman's World

by kuonji



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Episode Related: Hathor, Friendship, Gen, Past Rape/Non-con, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 17:23:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7396624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuonji/pseuds/kuonji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Men. </em>Daniel's had a traumatic experience, and the guys are no help at all.  But neither, everyone's making clear to her, is Sam. </p>
            </blockquote>





	A Woman's World

**Author's Note:**

> Orig. Posted 2007.12.25
> 
> Alternative Links:  
> <http://kuonji14.livejournal.com/14956.html>

"My Goddess has not left me. She will return!"

"You infidels will pay!"

Sam rolled her eyes, skirting the curtained-off section to reach the back of the infirmary. A few of the airmen had snapped out of it immediately like Colonel O'Neill had, but the majority of them were still moaning on and on about their 'Goddess', Hathor. Janet said the drug should dissipate in a couple of days.

It was going to be a long 48 hours.

"Daniel," she greeted the wan figure sitting up in bed.

He thinned his lips and glared at her. He actually looked kind of adorable like that, his glasses giving him a look of near-sighted childishness. She smiled encouragingly, which only caused him to scowl.

"My Goddess--"

"--has not abandoned you," Sam finished for him. "Yes, I know."

"My Goddess Hathor loves me," he boasted, crossing his arms imperiously.

"Oh for-- She does _not_ love you." Sam cocked an eyebrow at her CO, who had obviously been listening to the Hathor fan club for long enough to snap. "She's an evil snake, and now that she's done using you, she won't be back."

"She's not evil! She's beautiful and powerful, and she _loves_ me. I'm special."

"Special? She _used_ you, all right? Picked your geeky brain and adiosed. Get over it, already!"

For the first time, Daniel seemed to waver. "She didn't-- She wasn't using me."

"Oh yeah? Then why didn't she take you with her?"

Daniel lifted his chin. "She'll be back for me. She said that I was the most passionate and perfect human she had ever allowed to seed her children."

The penny dropped. Sam gaped.

"Daniel, you-- and Hathor...?"

The Colonel raised an eyebrow. "Daniel, you _dog_."

***

The next time she visited Daniel, he was curled on his side, sobbing uncontrollably. Daniel was obviously taking it as badly as she had feared. "I'm sorry," he was muttering, maybe to the Colonel behind him, maybe to the universe in general. "Please forgive me. I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault, Daniel," Sam soothed, heart breaking at the sight.

"Ah, Captain..." Colonel O'Neill didn't get to finish vocalizing his thought before Daniel's body snapped taut and he pinned Sam with a deadly glare.

"You!" he screamed. "You murdered her children!" Sam flinched as Daniel lunged at her, coming up short against restraints that she had overlooked upon coming in. She wondered if they should call someone to keep him from hurting himself. However, Daniel seemed to wilt just as quickly, falling back into a weeping heap. "No..." He twisted on the bed, as if in agony.

"Doctor Frasier tells us there will be some pain until the residual effects subside." Sam startled again, feeling out of sorts. She'd barely noticed Teal'c was there.

Daniel was shaking, the signs of withdrawal evident as he clutched at his own hair in fits. "I let you kill them," he continued to moan. "Why didn't I stop you? _Bon'iqua, bon'iqua_ _ha'shak? or'onac tak hakor shol'va... satak Hathor, metaia mel nok cha mel? shal'kek krist'a... shal'kek ha'shak krist'a..._ "

Sam stared, round-eyed, as Daniel dissolved into wordless tears. "What's he saying?" she finally ventured to ask.

The Colonel, collapsed in a plastic folding chair, circled one hand in the air. "Who knows? Maybe he's ordering a pizza. Extra crust."

***

Sam asked Teal'c afterwards.

"It is of no importance, Major Carter," he replied. "His words were said in madness."

"He thinks he betrayed someone." She'd picked up the word 'traitor' in the jumble of Goa'uld.

Teal'c's eyes turned hard. "Daniel Jackson is not a _shol'va_. He will remember this when he is himself again."

Sam sucked the air through her teeth, not sure about broaching the topic on her mind but deciding to go for it after all. "Teal'c, I don't think it's just him thinking that she's his god that's got him so cut up about being abandoned by her."

The big Jaffa gave her an unenlightened lift of an eyebrow.

"Teal'c she--" she paused to check for eavesdroppers. "She _slept_ with him."

Teal'c's frown deepened. "That will no longer influence his loyalties, once the drug has left him."

"That's not what I mean. Think about it. We don't know why she did it, but I'm going to bet Daniel didn't ask for it. It's going to leave an impact on him."

Maybe it'd just been his good looks. Maybe it had been plain curiosity. But the fact was, Hathor had picked Daniel out in particular. She had drugged him and taken him away and... well, okay, let's call a nail a nail -- had _raped_ the guy. They couldn't expect him to just dust that off.

"It is an embarrassment that he will overcome," Teal'c intoned. He didn't seem inclined to think anymore about the matter.

Men.

***

Sam was in the middle of a meeting when Daniel was finally ready to leave the infirmary, but since Janet informed her that he was refusing visitors anyway, Sam felt it was just as well to visit his lab later in the day.

The elevator she boarded held two airmen, both of whom gave her embarrassed looks that she studiously ignored.

Sam had been drugged into questionable behavior before and she liked to maintain that it had been a character-building experience (even if she tended to cringe around the Colonel if she thought about it for too long). She was trying to encourage all the airmen in the complex to consider the Hathor situation as the same.

Daniel did her the favor of skipping straight past embarrassed to hostile. "Hello, Sam," he greeted her, her fist still in midair to knock on his doorway. She didn't have to be a linguist herself to understand his tone as: 'Come any closer and I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth.'

Yup. The glory of being surrounded by testosterone-laden, emotionally closed-off men.

"Hello, Daniel," she returned, just as if his greeting had been genuine.

His gaze could have lasered her to ashes right there. "Sam. I kind of have a lot of work to catch up on." Underneath the words, she heard: 'Get the hell out of my space.'

"Daniel." Too sharp. She consciously softened her tone. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," he returned, drawing out the vowel into an insolent question. Sam ignored that and forged on.

"I wanted to let you know that I'm here for you. If you need anything. Anything at all."

Daniel's face blanched, and he turned away. Okay, probably not the best way to put it.

Sam had never been any good at the crying on the shoulder thing. Too much military growing up, too much balls-busting in her blood. Even as a child, between her and her brother, she'd always been the one with the skinned knees.

But no matter how awkward she felt, she always did have a weakness for hurt creatures and people.

She touched his forearm, feeling him flinch as she squeezed. "You don't have to feel like you need to be strong." As far as Sam was concerned, Daniel had nothing to prove, and she wanted him to know that. "Most of the airmen are having a hard time, too. And they didn't go through what you did."

She saw him lick his lips, a nervous habit she'd seen before. Then he jerked his arm away, and she saw his brows come down. "I'm fine. You can go help some other lost soul."

"Look, you don't have to talk to me about it, but you really should talk to someone."

Daniel whirled on her. "Oh, but see, even if I _wanted_ to do that, there's one tiny problem. You remember that contract you guys made me sign? The one with all the dire threats if I break confidentiality?" His eyebrows waggled with perfectly annoying pitch.

"I'm not talking about the confidential stuff."

"My entire life for the last two years is confidential."

"I meant... the personal side."

"I'm _fine_."

"Daniel!" Sam huffed, losing patience. "Rape isn't something you just get over like a cold."

"Wha--?" His face blanked, then took on a constipated cast. "What the _hell_ is wrong with you people.That's not even--" Daniel snatched up a folder, seemingly at random, and stalked out the door in the middle of his own sentence.

"Huh," she said to the empty lab. "That could have gone better."

***

"Colonel. Sir. About Daniel."

The Colonel looked up from reading a report. He seemed surprised to see her, and for good reason. She'd never come knocking at his office before. She usually picked him up at the commissary or they met at her lab if she wanted to talk.

"I hear he was let out of the big house today," he returned, amiably, setting aside his work. He raised his eyebrows when she closed the door but made no comment. Sam found a chair and parked herself in it. She drummed her fingers on her thighs.

"You heard what Daniel said. About him and Hathor."

"Yeah. Lucky dog, isn't he? Doesn't get shot at, and even gets the girl."

"Sir, please. Think about this seriously."

"Oh, I'm always serious." His flippant tone said otherwise. Sam grit her teeth. Jack O'Neill wasn't the misogynist she had thought he was at first, but there were still things about him that she couldn't _stand_.

"I thought maybe the idea of one of your men being raped while in service might be important to you," she said. No point in pulling punches. She knew the Colonel that well, at least.

"Whoa! What?" He jerked back, doing everything short of throwing his arms in the air to show his surprise.

"You don't think he wanted to have sex with a Goa'uld, do you?"

The Colonel stared at her for a moment, his mouth open and his head cocked just a few degrees, that 'I'm-stupid' look that Sam abhorred. Then he sighed, low and heavy. He laced his fingers together and tapped them once on the desk before settling into a stiff-backed, very Colonel-ish pose.

"Has Dr. Jackson acted in any way that would cause you to doubt that he's in current possession of his faculties?"

"Ah, no, sir...?"

"Has he asked for you to intervene on his behalf?"

"Well, no."

"Then I suggest, Captain, that you allow Dr. Jackson's private matters to stay that way. Ah!" He held up one finger and speared her with a chiseled gaze, cutting off anything she might have wanted to say. "Daniel wasn't hurt, and his tests came back clean. Do me a favor and don't rock the boat, Carter. We've still got a lot of other things on our plate."

It shouldn't have been a surprise to her that he had checked the test results. The Colonel was big on protecting his men. Even the geeks. Sam still didn't like the situation, but what he was saying made a hard sort of sense.

"Yes, sir."

***

Debriefings were an interesting event for all involved. The only thing that made it bearable was that the General (sporting a thankfully mild head injury) had been under the same influence as everyone else in the mountain. Sam didn't envy General Hammond the job of reporting to his own superiors.

SG-1 had been involved in the situation from first contact to wrap-up. Three-fourths of the team had also been free of alien influence at least part of the time, making them the most capable of a coherant report. It made their debriefing a long and detailed affair.

They had finally finished going through their respective parts in the business, including Sam's report on the initial findings regarding the infant symbiote remains, when she noticed Daniel fluttering his fingers in a half-wave. He looked like a kid raising his hand in class.

"Dr. Jackson?"

"Ah, General, there's... This might not ultimately be important. But..."

The General's face took on a gentler cast. "We know about you and Hathor, son."

"No." He shook his head, flinging his hair in an arc across the nape of his neck. "No, no, actually, you don't."

Sam listened in disbelief as Daniel proceeded to outline Goa'uld Reproduction 101 for them. His sensitive fingers were white-knuckled on his thighs, and his tight, empty gaze never left the table-top.

She badly wanted a drink.

***

The Colonel obliged her thoughts by calling for dinner at Bennigan's. Daniel begged off. Teal'c borrowed a cap. Sam wished she'd worn jeans today instead of the flower-print skirt.

It seemed so girlish, at a time when she wanted desperately to be one of the guys.

Then again, despite her wardrobe, they all managed to stew with equally dismal silence over their menus. That was one of the great things about hanging out with men. Especially military men. When Sam didn't feel like making small talk, she certainly never had to.

Other than ordering dinner, no one put more than three words together at a time until the food arrived, when the Colonel suddenly asked:

"They're all dead, right?"

Sam snapped her head up, but the Colonel was staring in concentration at his plate. A glance at Teal'c gave her no clue. Though it was hard to tell with Teal'c at the best of times. "Sir?"

"The snakes. Dead?"

"Oh. Yes." She decided it'd be a bad time to mention that she'd been hoping they could have saved at least one for study.

"Good." He speared a grilled jumbo shrimp and bit it savagely in half.

***

"You are a strong and worthy man, Daniel Jackson. And you are not alone."

Sam paused outside of Daniel's lab. It wasn't that she had meant to eavesdrop. She'd been hoping to check up on Daniel, maybe make up for the last conversation. An exchange of low, burdened voices convinced her to beat a hasty retreat, when a different sound stopped her.

Was that? God. It was.

Daniel cried like a man, all choked-back sobs and pain. He cried like someone in a rage. It shouldn't have surprised her. Any more than Teal'c's presence should have. It wasn't as if she had the dibs on providing emotional support; hadn't she always shied away from being 'the woman', anyway?

From her viewpoint, she could just see Daniel's shoulder and Teal'c's thick, dark fingers on it. They dug into him so deep it must have been painful. There was more strength in those fingers than Sam probably had in her whole arm.

Sam made her stealthy exit, for the first time in years feeling inadequate next to the men in her field unit. Despite it all, she just wasn't cut out for this male bonding stuff.

***

The Colonel came to find her a couple of dismal days later. She yanked a piece of paper over the notepad in front of her when he poked his head inside, covering up her idle doodles.

"Sir."

Sam had tried several times to speak to Daniel again, but he had been avoiding her like the plague, and she found she couldn't challenge that choice. She felt edgy, useless. Samantha Carter wasn't used to feeling useless.

"Carter." Colonel O'Neill sauntered in, hands in pockets, but his face was serious. "A word?"

"Of course, sir." He sidled his way into a seat.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she replied, unconsciously echoing Daniel's defensive tone. "I'm fine, sir," she repeated, more respectfully. The Colonel didn't seem to take offense. He tapped one long forefinger on the tabletop.

"Look, I know this thing between Daniel and Hathor has been bothering you."

Sam stared back at him, a little discomfited. "Well... Doesn't it bother you?"

He sighed, loudly. "Carter... I didn't think I'd ever have to say something like this to you, but -- you have to stop thinking like a woman."

"Sir?" She was genuinely confused.

"Daniel happened to have sex with a hot lady while under the influence. It's not the end of the world. Hathor out there making Goa'uld-human symbiotes? Now that's a bigger problem." He held up his hand, palm out, belaying her instinctive retort. "I'm telling you, Carter. Daniel's an adaptable guy. You just have to give him some time to work things out."

Sam felt her face muscles tighten up, locking away an expression of disapproval, the way one learned to do when disagreeing with superior officers. "With all due respect, Colonel, I don't think it's about the symbiotes." A memory of Chulak came to her -- the sound of an MP-5 and shattering glass filled with squeaking screams. "Not just about the symbiotes," she amended.

"Captain. Bottom line: I need a functioning team. _We_ need a functioning team, and we're never going to get that back if you're being all--" he waved his arm up and down as if to indicate the Sam-sized shape in space in front of him "--womanish on him.

"I can't have half my team out of commission because you're distracted and he's feeling harassed." He ran a hand over his graying hair in apparent weariness. "Leave it alone, okay? Daniel's coping. Just like the rest of us."

Sam took a breath, wondering for the thousandth time if the Colonel remembered what had been done to him. He hadn't asked. But she'd noticed him once or twice staring hard at Teal'c's midsection.

"Yes, sir," she said, giving nothing away.

It looked like she was capable of being 'one of the guys' after all, she thought, with a sense of faint self-disgust.

***

Another knock came at her doorway an hour later, just as she was packing it in for home. She wasn't getting anything done, anyway.

"Daniel!" she exclaimed, seeing who was there. "Come in. Listen--" she started, ready to make the appropriate apologies, but Daniel rushed forward and overrode her with his wide hands and earnest eyes.

"Sam, I just wanted to say something."

She hesitated, then closed her mouth firmly, showing him a listening posture. He nodded, clearly satisfied at her attention.

"I wanted to apologize for being... well, for being such an ass. I was rude to you. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to push everyone away." He rubbed his eyes under his glasses, the gesture familiar to Sam by now from watching him squint and gape and argue negotiations off-world. "No, that's a lie. I am. But-- If you could give me some space, some time to work things out. Just for a while. Please?"

"Of course," she was quick to answer. It was the least she could do.

One point to the Colonel, she thought, resigned.

Daniel smiled brightly, a slow upturn of his lips. "Thanks, Sam. For, uh. You know." He hesitated a fraction before patting her on the arm once. His fingers were cold.

He was off again like a spring, nearly out the door, before he stopped, paused, spun around and said:

"Also, I- I guess it was rape. I hadn't thought about it that way before." He grimaced and lifted one hand, making half a cryptic gesture. He turned away and disappeared down the hall before Sam could come up with any response.

Sam blinked. Huh. One point to her, too.

Somehow, it didn't feel much like a victory.

***

With the whole mountain on temporary stand-down, Sam turned in her reports early and took two days' leave. She heard that Daniel and the Colonel had separately done the same. She wondered briefly what Teal'c did with his off time. In any case, they were all cleared for missions again by the next week, and when she saw Daniel again, he was a little quieter than usual but glad to see them.

***

"Sidearm or escort, Daniel. You know the drill."

Even if the shuffling in the dark hadn't woken Sam, the Colonel's deceptively casual words would have. One dark shape rose upright, light reflecting briefly off of the spectacled eyes.

"Fuck off, Jack."

Colonel O'Neill sighed. She knew the sound; he was going to give up. And why not? The area was secure. The locals were friendly. The Colonel knew how to pick his fights. Well, so did she.

This had been going on for three weeks now. Their 'functioning team' was that, all right. But SG-1 could do better. Way better.

"I'll go," she said quickly, sitting up and grabbing for her boots. Daniel threw a glance at her before stalking off without waiting. She pulled her boots on hastily, unlaced, and followed just in time to get the door of the john slammed in her face. She shrugged and prepared to wait outside.

The door jerked open about fifteen minutes later. She jumped in spite of herself, but she got the right effect as Daniel came up short against her, clearly surprised. He obviously hadn't expected her to wait. She caught sight of him shoving some snarled and lumpy fabric into his pocket. "What do you want?"

"This is about Hathor, isn't it?" she said, putting forth a picture of calm.

Daniel pursed his lips in that pouty, bad-tempered way he had before he started to tell off a person.

Sam decided to pre-empt that.

"You _do_ know what I'm talking about. I am _not_ way off track. And you _don't_ need to get back to bed right now." As Daniel started to interrupt, she added, "And I am not going to fuck off."

That seemed to take him aback. Sam didn't swear in front of him. Oh, she'd learned the vocabulary a week into training, but she'd decided early on that she didn't need to swear like a man to be as tough as one. Anyway, she thought it tended to ruin her scientist image.

"Hathor?" she repeated, pressing her advantage.

"What about her?"

"You dreaming about her?" she challenged. It was a terrible thing to say, but Sam had spent most of her life in high-stress environments. She knew how to get through to a man in a snit. Scientist or otherwise, they were all essentially the same.

Daniel's eyes narrowed, dark and dilated here in the dim light. He straightened to loom over her, and his lips curled. Sam had the thought that at any other time, Daniel would have been the one fascinated at all the alpha mannerisms he showed when he was backed into a corner.

"I dream about _screwing_ ," he spat. "I dream about fucking. Sex. Sometimes I've got Hathor under me. Sometimes it's other people. Sometimes it's you." His gaze was level and cold. Sam admitted that it might have scared her in the daytime, it was so un-Daniel-like.

But at oh-dark-hundred, on little sleep, and both worried about and pissed off at her friend with the atrocious flip-flopping temper, Sam had her own ire up enough not to care. "I'm a woman in the Air Force, Danny Boy. Men have outnumbered me at least twenty-to-one all my life. Nothing you say is going to shock me."

Daniel looked furious. The whites of his eyes were a little startling, and his slept-on hair stuck out in tufts and tangles. They both knew that he out-weighed her and out-reached her, but both of them also knew that she could put him on the ground in two seconds if she wanted.

With a groan, he whirled on the wall and slammed his fist into it, pulling it only at the last second so as to save his knuckles from being bloodied.

Sam approved. She thought she would have lost some respect for the archaeologist if he had really gone primal on the brushed steel hallway there.

"Oh, cut the crap, Daniel," she exclaimed, trying with her tone to persuade, not admonish. "I'm worried about you. Talk to me about what's bothering you. Maybe I can help."

"You wouldn't understand."

"Wouldn't I?"

"Of course not. You're a wo--"

"Oh, I wouldn't finish that if I were you."

Daniel kept his balled fist against the wall for long seconds. He squeezed his eyes shut. When he spoke, his voice was as flat and toneless as the gray wall he was facing.

"Hathor can make human-compatible Goa'uld now. Just because I couldn't keep it in my pants."

Sam resisted the urge to make a flat-out dismissal of that idea, tried to be supportive -- and logical -- instead. "I know we don't have all the data yet, but as far as we know, that was a one-time thing. Anyway, we neutralized it before it did any harm. You can't beat yourself up over that." She couldn't help adding, "I thought you were smarter than this."

"Exactly! I _should_ have been smarter." He made as if to punch the wall again, but he stopped himself, choosing to turn and slump against it instead. He glared down at his bare toes.

Sam ventured closer to put her own feet in his line of sight. "I saw you afterward. You were practically comatose. She must've had to drug you to the gills to get you to cooperate."

Daniel sneered without raising his head, his full lips making the look nasty. "You sure I wasn't just blissed out of my mind?"

"Give me some credit, Daniel. I've seen blissed out men before. I can tell the difference."

He did look at her now, his frown a question. It took him a few, but he seemed to get the implication as his eyes widened just a bit before he ducked his head away. Sam grinned, pushing the look into slyness, even as she rolled her eyes at herself inwardly.

She wasn't as 'experienced' as she had just led Daniel to believe. If she had a bedpost, there'd only be a couple of notches in it. Even though one of those notches had been good and deep.

Sam wondered sadly if Sha'uri had been Daniel's one and only. It wouldn't be too hard to imagine. If anything, Daniel was loyal to a fault.

Daniel slid to the ground, not unlike a slowly deflating balloon. He hung his head between his knees. When he didn't say anything for long minutes, Sam knelt next to him, close enough to touch, but not. Waiting.

"I read one of those self-help books. After what you said."

"Huh?"

"Ah... _Recovering From Rape_ , by Dr. Kate something."

"Oh."

Daniel was full of surprises.

She tried to imagine him casually picking up some sort of rape recovery manual, taking it to the cash register. Her mind boggled. She felt she ought to say something encouraging. "That was very brave of you," she managed, wincing herself at the inadequacy of the words.

"I, uh, I stole it from the library," he admitted, his lip twitching just a bit. "I'm going to bring it back," he assured her, his voice on the edge of a whine.

Sam couldn't help a giggle escaping. Daniel joined her.

They chuckled for a while, longer than the humor of the situation probably warranted.

"So did it help?" she wanted to know.

"Well. There was one chapter..." He leaned his head back against the wall, and Sam couldn't help but notice the vulnerable line of his throat. "Overcoming Helplessness: Regaining Your Concentration and Empowering Yourself," he recalled. "It... there was some good advice in there. I've taken up weight-lifting. And I asked Teal'c to teach me how to meditate."

Sam hesitated, on the verge of confessing her eavesdropping and asking Daniel how things were now between him and the big Jaffa. Daniel shrugged and went on before she could say anything. Just as well.

"Otherwise, there wasn't much that I found useful. Mostly, there was a lot about self-worth and how to relearn my vagina." His lips curled upwards, wry.

Sam cut her eyes away in apology. "I guess most of them are written for women, aren't they?"

"Yeah. Not to mention, I don't think a book exists that would help me deal with seeding a spawn of the alien parasites that enslaved my wife."

Sam turned that thought around in her head, sensing the delicate territory here.

"You didn't betray your wife," she finally said. "It wasn't your choice."

He scrubbed his face with his hands. "What am I going to say to Sha'uri if we find her now? 'Daniel, I've been tortured and suffering while being forced to do horrible distasteful things. How about you?' 'Oh, you know, I've been making out with an evil alien so that she can go and make more slaves like you.'

"I can't face her, Sam. You don't know what that's like. Every time I go through that gate, instead of hoping that she'll be there, I'm hoping that she _won't_. What kind of husband does that make me?" His face looked drawn. Guilt-ridden, she thought.

"Daniel--"

"You know, Sha'uri used to tease me, how she could get me to, to, ah, _respond_ to her at the drop of a hat." He frowned. "Well, actually, the term was, 'at a hork's whistle'. But anyway, you get the idea. She thought it was cute. Sexy. If she only knew..."

"That just shows you're a healthy man," Sam protested. She sobered for Daniel's sake. "And that you love her."

Daniel just shook his head, once, sharp. "Sex and food."

"Excuse me?"

"They're the most basic instincts of human life. If I can't even-- I'm supposed to be all civilized. Shoes, lighters, ballpoint pens, whoopee! But when it comes down to it, I'm just instinct." His mouth twisted down, unhappy.

"On Abydos," he continued. "When a couple gets married on Abydos, the man swears to obey his Good Father, and to protect his wife, whom his Good Father entrusted-- _gave_ to him. She belongs to him, see? And I was never... I was all into equality and crap. I thought I was-- I thought that was better for her.

"But I was fooling myself all along. I wasn't being _fair_. I was just never willing to take responsibility for Sha'uri, protect her like the treasured possession that she should have been. Yet, I'm obviously not 'civilized' enough to stop--" His shoulders hunched. Stop... Sha'uri from being captured? Stop... Hathor from using him? Stop...

"It was all for my own convenience, in the end. Morals, self control, what Sha'uri wanted -- all that had nothing to do with anything."

Sam inched closer, instinctively offering her body warmth. "Take it from someone who knows. Being treated like an object, treasured and protected or not, is the last thing a woman needs."

"Huh?"

Sam grimaced. She tapped her own chest. "Fifty gold pieces and a loaded berretta, remember?" It wasn't every girl who had her worth broken down like that for her. She tried not to be bitter about that, and about how relieved she'd been at the time that the big bad men had ridden in to get her out.

Sam was practical enough to realize that most people wouldn't even remember the incident. Still, it was right in the report for all posterity to see. It was every military woman's nightmare -- being forced to play the damsel in distress. With a harem involved, no less.

Daniel cocked his head, then raised one fingertip, freezing it thoughtfully in mid-air. "I thought that was called _teamwork_."

Sam started to protest, but she'd been shooting her mouth off enough lately. She stopped and thought about strong gazes and strong fingers. Strong men. Daniel had a way of blundering along, but reaching the heart of a matter when it counted. Sam ducked her own head and smiled, slow.

"Yeah, so? See, you're a smart guy. The best. So you should be the first person to realize that you couldn't have helped any of this from happening."

Daniel shook his head, unconvinced.

"Hey." Sam was through talking. It was the middle of the night. Middle of a mission. She'd already had her one fun little epiphany of the year. "C'mere." She reached out and captured Daniel's wide shoulders within the circle of her tight arms.

It was a hug for pure comfort, not for goodbye, or I'm dying, or any of the limited number of things that men -- military men -- hugged each other for. She could do this, though. Because, hell, she was the woman, right?

"You're right. We're a team. Don't you forget, too, or we're all in big trouble." The words were playful, but she kissed him gently, on the cheek. "It's going to be okay. Okay?"

He didn't agree with her. He didn't disagree, either.

Daniel put his head on her shoulder and hugged her back.

***

"Hey, Captain."

"Sir?"

Colonel O'Neill didn't even look at her, giving his bootlaces one more yank before tying them in a firm double knot. His voice was firm and matter-of-fact when he said:

"Good job."

He stood and patted her on the arm, like he might have with Teal'c or Ferretti. One of the guys. But his smile was special-tailored for her. And that was swell.

Sam straightened. This time, she didn't second-guess herself when she said, "Sir. Before you woke up in that sarcophagus--"

"I know." He squinted a look at her from the side of his eyes, before he slipped out his shades and settled them, black and opaque, onto his face. "Thanks, Carter." In a louder voice, he called, "Hey, time's a-wasting, kids! SG-1, move out!"

  
END.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to wikipedia for the [Goa'uld tutorial](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa%27uld_language). For those curious, this is what Daniel's saying, in my creatively mangled Goa'uld grammar:  
> "Why, why am I so weak? Here I lie, a banished traitor. Great Hathor, will you never speak to me again? I die an outcast... I die a weak outcast..." (Bon'iqua, bon'iqua _ha'shak? or'onac tak hakor shol'va... satak Hathor, metaia mel nok cha mel? shal'kek krist'a... shal'kek ha'shak krist'a..._ ")  
>   
>   
> \----------------------  
>   
> Notes About The Story aka Why And What The Hell
> 
> I wanted to write a Hathor fic for two reasons:
> 
> 1) While Daniel is my favorite character on SG-1, when I watched the episode Hathor, I always thought that character-wise, the episode was all about Sam. So I wanted to write a story about her reactions to the events in Hathor as well as her interactions with her all-male team in the aftermath.
> 
> 2) I've read quite a few Daniel-centric Hathor fics, and while I enjoyed them, I always felt that Daniel and his team reacted too... woman-like. Too much with the shame and the fear, and too heavy with the sensitive support and protectiveness on the part of his team. Just for the sake of balance, if nothing else, I wanted to read/write a fic in which Daniel, Jack, and Teal'c were angry, coping men.
> 
> So that's how "A Woman's World" came to be.
> 
> Unfortunately, as those who remember the ending of the episode "Hathor" may have realized, this turned out to be a slight AU. The reason for this is pure stupidity on my part, for having outlined the entire story and written most of it before I rewatched the episode. The savvy reader may also notice that Daniel is not quite in character here. That would be because I wrote this while watching season 4, with an older, edgier Daniel Jackson that I unknowingly transposed into season 1. I attempted to rewrite this story to fit the canon. In the end, however, I was too attached to the infirmary scene to get rid of it, and too much of the rest of the story seemed to hinge on Daniel's volatile snappishness to tame it.
> 
> Ultimately, I settled for keeping this story and writing an entirely separate (canon-accurate) story, which I posted as "[Of Gods And Men](http://kuonji14.livejournal.com/14757.html)".
> 
> I hope that you may give both a read. :)  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you enjoyed this story, you might try these:  
>      [Of Gods And Men](http://kuonji14.livejournal.com/14757.html) (Stargate SG-1), by kuonji  
>      [All's Fair](http://kuonji14.livejournal.com/9518.html) (Stargate SG-1), by kuonji  
>      [Potential](http://kuonji14.livejournal.com/8737.html) (Stargate SG-1), by kuonji  
>      [Reflections of Hathor](http://community.livejournal.com/jd_ficathon/2131.html) (Stargate SG-1), by justhuman  
> 


End file.
